Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [24]
But even before the first mission to Japan, complications arose from an unexpected quarter when Chiang Kai-shek made a request of the senior American officer in China: slender, bespectacled Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell. Owing to increasing Japanese pressure, the Chinese generalissimo wanted Superfortresses to support the Nationalist army with tactical missions. Stilwell, who held none too high an opinion of Chiang (whom he called “the peanut”), had no authority to divert XX Bomber Command from its strategic mission, which was exactly the reason Hap Arnold had decided to run 20th Air Force from Washington.
Meanwhile, plans continued for Mission 2: next stop, Japan.
Target Japan
In the fall of 1944 returning navy ace Saburo Sakai surveyed Tokyo with his remaining eye. “The city appeared drab and lifeless,” he wrote. “Most of the stores were closed, their windows empty. The significance was clear. There were no goods to sell, and the owners were away, working in war plants. The few stores which remained open hardly resembled the colorful and well-stocked establishments I once knew. Few goods were on display, and for the most part these were crude substitutes. The Allied blockade of Japan was pinching the national stomach severely.”
Sakai had returned to a nation perennially hungry. Forced to import food to sustain its growing population since the turn of the century, Dai Nippon tightened its belt, then cinched up another notch. And another. Sugar had been rationed since December 1940; rice two months later. Other commodities such as fruit, vegetables, salt, and even matches were progressively added to the list.
When general food rationing began in February 1942 the average daily intake was already less than 60 percent of most Americans. Coffee became a luxury, and a monthly fasting day was introduced. Among the few granted exceptions were miners and heavy industry workers: those who provided the steel to augment Japan’s fighting spirit. Meanwhile, despite a dedicated bureaucracy to enforce food regulations, a growing black market flourished.
Faced with an American embargo in August 1941, strategic materials had been stockpiled, notably oil and iron. “Inessential driving” was banned eighteen months before Pearl Harbor, and soon thereafter production of rubber-soled tabi shoes was halted to save raw material.
Certainly the Japanese fabric was threadbare. After three years of unrelenting effort, the economy—one-seventeenth of America’s in 1941—had reached full stretch.
It was about to be stretched further.
In ten months of operations from India and China between June 1944 and April 1945, XX Bomber Command launched forty-nine missions. Only nine targeted Japan, the first being flown the night of June 15–16. It was a harbinger of doom for Tokyo, far surpassing the pinpricks inflicted by the Doolittle Raiders more than two years before, or the more recent 11th Air Force missions from the Aleutians to the Kurils (see Appendix A). However, the campaign involved more conflict than was evident.
As commander of the India B-29s, Ken Wolfe felt constant pressure from Washington. In accordance with Hap Arnold’s wishes, he wanted to put the maximum number of bombers over Japanese soil but an “acceptable number” was problematical. Seeming to care little for the immense logistics problems inherent to the CBI, Arnold said he expected at least 100 bombers to be dispatched “on or before 15 June, weather permitting.”
Wolfe advised Washington that ninety planes might leave India but barely half would reach Japan; the situation might improve if the mission were delayed a few days for extra maintenance. Arnold was unyielding: aside from his own professional investment in the B-29 program, he was aware of President Roosevelt’s sense of urgency in supporting Chiang and striking the enemy homeland. Following orders, Wolfe sent ninety-two bombers north to Chengtu on June 13, with a dozen aborts and one loss. That left seventy-nine planes arriving in China; fewer would be able to fly the mission.
The takeoff